‘As a teenager I came up with many ideas. Antelope mozzarella was one’

Federico Marchetti said the merger of Yoox and Net-a-Porter had been the best thing for the two companiesJOHN NGUYEN FOR THE TIMES

Helping to save Africa from starvation by mass producing mozzarella-style cheese from the milk of wildebeest is a novel approach to dealing with hunger. Intriguing it may be, but the idea has never come to fruition because it turns out that milking a wild antelope is every bit as difficult as you might imagine. Federico Marchetti is well aware of this. The chief executive of Yoox Net-a-Porter, the online luxury fashion retailer, once considered the production of wildebeest mozzarella as a potential business opportunity.

“When I was a teenager I always wanted to have my own company and come up with the idea of the century,” he said. “So I came up with many ideas. Some were good ones and some were crazy, like making…

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